By Markham Hislop, Editor

The tale of Art Mackenzie’s fight with City Hall to save Race City, the motorsport facility on the southeast edge of Calgary, is fundamentally about injustice suffered at the hand of arrogant government.  In my opinion, the City of Calgary is dead wrong in its treatment of Art.  And to make matters worse, many of its elected officials, seven to be exact, have allowed the administration to pull the wool over the eyes in the perpetuation of this injustice.

So let’s not mince words. 

Southeast Calgary aldermen Linda Fox-Mellway and Joe Ceci abdicated their responsibilities to the citizens of Calgary when they voted in January against Ald. Ric McIver’s motion to extend Race City’s lease. 

They drank waste and recycling’s koolaid without asking hard questions of the bureaucrats.  They accepted, without question, without searching hard enough for the facts, that the issue of Race City and the Shepard Landfill expansion was a zero-sum game: somebody had to win, somebody had to lose.

Here is the question they did not ask: Why can’t the storm water retention ponds and other facilities required for the expansion be integrated with a re-designed Race City?

Art Mackenzie and other motorsport enthusiasts I have talked to say that in Europe race courses are designed to work in conjunction with municipal facilities all the time.  For instance, the retention ponds could be set in the middle of a new road course. 

Art has proposed just such an arrangement to waste and recycling.  Did the bureaucrats seriously consider the idea?  According to Art, they immediately dismissed the concept with a curt, “It would be inconvenient for us,” and refused to discuss it again.

I would liked to have posed the same question to waste and recycling.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t allowed to.

Because the City is discussing the Race City lease with Art, it has declared all discussion of the matter to be “in camera.”  In other words, what goes on behind closed doors stays there.

And the bureaucrats have used in camera brilliantly.

They could have interpreted in camera to mean that all discussion of the lease and legal issues arising from those discussions were off-limits, but technical issues were fair game.  Feasibility studies, for instance, could have been made available.  Independent engineers could have opined about the technical merits of integrating the ponds and the road course.

Instead, they threw a blanket over everything.  I wasn’t allowed to ask a single question of a bureaucrat.  The closest I got was a tersely worded email from Dave Griffith justifying the razing of Race City for the greater good.

And that’s where Ald. Fox-Mellway and Ceci have failed. 

Joe told me a story about how an old alderman took him aside when he was just a cub on City Council and told him that the one thing Calgarians would not stand for is an interruption of their sewer and water service.  Joe extrapolated and concluded that  City services were sacrosanct.  He really believes he voted to protect basic services that were threatened by Race City’s continued existence.

Linda told me she asked the hard questions of the bureaucrats when they appeared before Council.  Well, I’ve heard from a couple of her colleagues that her questions were puffballs.  Maybe she thinks she asked hard questions, but in reality, not so much.

Both Linda and Joe have a chance to redeem theselves Monday night.  Now is the time to hold waste and recycling to account.  Reporters may be prevented from asking tough questions, but our aldermen are in a position to do so and they must do so.

Much is on the line.  A great (albeit declining lately from neglect) motorsport facility will be lost, racing enthusiasts will be forced to travel out of town to enjoy their sport, a dozen directly-linked businesses will fail or move out of Calgary, racing-related businesses (many of them in the southeast) will lose business, hospitality and service businesses will be affected, jobs will be lost.

And then there is the matter of public safety.  Evidence suggests Race City’s Secret Street program has given drivers an outlet for their racing passion and kept them from engaging it on Calgary’s streets.  Perhaps not a hundred per cent, but much less than it might have been otherwise.  With the imminent disappearance of Race City everyone, from racers to cops, fears an increase in street racing.

When the first innocent person is killed in a street race will we be saying, “Boy, that wouldn’t have happened if Race City was still around.”

Here is the question Joe Ceci and Linda Fox-Mellway can ask Dave Griffith Monday night: Why hasn’t an engineering study been conducted to determine if the expanded Shepard Landfill can co-exist with Race City?

And if they feel in a particularly fiesty mood, they can ask, Has the administration examined the feasbility of options other than taking over the Race City property?

I won’t even ask them to quiz City officials about the disputed lease and the unethical way, according to Art Mackenzie, they have negotiated with him without REALLY negotiating because they had no desire to compromise with Race City.

No, just stick to the one technical issue.  Can Race City and the Shepard Landfill co-habit the 160 acres of land?  If independent, or at least unbiased, engineers study the issue and conclude the motorsport facility has to go, then at least the racing community and Art will feel that they were given a serious and fair hearing.

But if the answer is that Race City and the landfill can co-exist, then a compromise solution can be arrived at that preserves all the benefits the track delivers to Calgary, not the least of which is making our streets a little safer.

Is that too much to ask of Joe and Linda, that they put a little effort into this issue and stop being door mats for waste and recycling?

I hope that after reading this column the answer is obvious.

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